Yuhua Wang - The Rise and Fall of Imperial China (Princeton Studies in Contemporary China)

THE RISE AND FALL OF IMPERIAL CHINA

PRINCETON STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA

Mary Gallagher and Yu Xie, Series Editors

The Rise and Fall of Imperial China: The Social Origins of State Development, Yuhua Wang

Study Gods: How the New Chinese Elite Prepare for Global Competition, Yi-Lin Chiang

A Decade of Upheaval: The Cultural Revolution in Rural China, Dong Guoqiang and Andrew G. Walder

Governing the Urban in China and India: Land Grabs, Slum Clearance, and the War on Air Pollution, Xuefei Ren

Chinas Urban Champions: The Politics of Spatial Development, Kyle A. Jaros

The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media, and Authoritarian Rule in China, Ya-Wen Lei

The Rise and Fall of Imperial China

THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF STATE DEVELOPMENT

YUHUA WANG

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON & OXFORD

Copyright 2022 by Princeton University Press

Princeton University Press is committed to the protection of copyright and the intellectual property our authors entrust to us. Copyright promotes the progress and integrity of knowledge. Thank you for supporting free speech and the global exchange of ideas by purchasing an authorized edition of this book. If you wish to reproduce or distribute any part of it in any form, please obtain permission.

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to

Published by Princeton University Press
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
99 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6JX

press.princeton.edu

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Control Number 2022941962

ISBN 978-0-691-21517-4
ISBN (pbk.) 978-0-691-21516-7
ISBN (e-book) 978-0-691-23751-0

Version 1.0

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

Editorial: Bridget Flannery-McCoy and Alena Chekanov
Production Editorial: Jill Harris
Cover Design: Karl Spurzem
Production: Lauren Reese
Publicity: Kate Hensley and Charlotte Coyne

Cover image: The Kangxi Emperors Southern Inspection Tour, Scroll Three: Jinan to Mount Tai by Wang Hui and assistants. Datable to 1698 (Qing Dynasty). Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York / Purchase, The Dillon Fund Gift, 1979.

For Boyang

1. ix
2. xi
3. xiii

Three Ideal Types of Elite Social Terrain

Summary of Argument

Timeline of Chinas State Development (6181911)

Temperature Anomalies and Conflict (01900)

Tomb Epitaph Example

Example of a Kinship Network

Tang Elite Social Terrain

Song Elite Social Terrain

Growth of Clan Collective Action

Fiscal Policies and Per Capita Taxation (01900)

Taxation as a Share of GDP: China vs. England (10001900)

Probability of Ruler Deposal by Elites (01900)

Ruler Survival in China, Europe, and the Islamic World (10001800)

Number of Registered Households (620780)

Number of Households by Region (01200)

Locations of Major Officials Hometowns in Tang and Song

Major Officials Kinship Networks in Tang and Song

Major Officials Marriage Networks in Tang and Song

Bureaucratic Recruitment of Major Officials from Tang to Song

Major Officials Kinship Networks from Tang to Song

Major Politicians during the Wang Anshi Reform

Two Politicians Kinship Networks

Number of Local Single Whip Reforms (15311637)

Single Whip Implementation and Prefectural Representation in National Politics

Social Network of Major Ming Officials and Their Kin (15731620)

Overlapping Generations and Capital Accumulation

Spatial Distribution of Lineage Surnames (18011850)

Exam Success, Violence, and Lineage Organizations: Scatter Plots

Registered Land during Ming and Qing

Mass Rebellion and Elite Collective Action (18001900)

Lineage Activity Trends before and after the Taiping Rebellion

Declarations of Independence (1911)

A Sample from the Comprehensive Catalogue of Chinese Genealogies

Major Officials Marriage Network and Communities under Emperor Zhenzong (9971022)

Social Fractionalization of Major Officials Marriage Networks in Song (9601279)

Northern Song Politicians Marriage Network (11671185)

Number of Years Taken to Implement the Single Whip

Estimated Survival and Hazard Functions of Prefectures with and without at Least One Major Official

Number of Advanced Scholars and Its Correlation with the Number of Major Officials

Number of Lineage Organizations (18011850)

Number of Genealogy Books (18011850)

Number of Advanced Scholars (16441800)

Number of Conflicts (16441800)

Mass Rebellion Locations (18501869)

Number of Genealogy Books (18901909)

Three Steady-State Equilibria

Single Whip Implementation Timeline at the Provincial Level

Temperature Anomalies and Conflict: OLS Estimates

Major Fiscal Policies in China (221 BCE1911 CE)

Exit of Chinese Emperors (221 BCE1911 CE)

Summary Statistics for Dataset in Chapter 5

Political Selection and Geography of Kinship Network: OLS Estimates

Local Concentration of Kin and Support for Reform: OLS Estimates

Summary Statistics for Dataset in Chapter 6

Sources for Ming Major Officials Kinship Networks

National Representation and Delay in Adopting the Single Whip: Survival Analysis

Advanced Scholars and Major Officials: OLS Estimates

Summary Statistics for Dataset in Chapter 7

Exam Success, Violence, and Lineage Organizations: OLS Estimates

Summary Statistics for Dataset in Chapter 8

Mass Rebellion and Lineage Activity: Difference-in-Differences Estimates

Lineage Activity and Declaration of Independence: OLS Estimates

THIS IS my dream book.

Ive always been interested in history, and have dreamed of writing a book about Chinese history. In 2014, after I submitted the final draft of my first book, the time finally came. I decided to start writing a book that introduces Chinese history to the social sciences and brings social sciences to Chinese history.

I sat down and began to read what social scientists, mostly economic historians, had written about Chinese history. Each piece of the puzzle told an interesting story, but I struggled to get a sense of the bigger picture. Most of the works focused on Chinas economic and fiscal decline in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in an attempt to explore the roots of the Great Divergence in economic development between China and Europe. I was eager to instead find out the political story. I wanted to understand why the elites did not implement policies that promoted economic development and fiscal capacities. Were they not able to? Or did they not want to? Searching for the political backstory, I discovered another literature that studies the formation of the Chinese state. That literature portrays the Chinese state as a strong and centralized entity that was forged in iron and blood two millennia ago. But what happened in between?

I was trying to connect the dots. A sabbatical in 2016 gave me the opportunity to dive into Chinas history. I decided to put aside my other research projects and read. It turned out to be my least productive year with respect to writing, but the most stimulating in terms of generating new ideas. I read historians works and official Chinese histories, dynasty by dynasty. What struck me the most, among the hundreds of books scattered around my office, was the work by social historians. Hilary Beattie, Beverly Bossler, Chung-li Chang, Yinke Chen, Prasenjit Duara, Patricia Ebrey, Robert Hartwell, Ping-ti Ho, Robert Hymes, David Johnson, Hanguang Mao, Nicolas Tackett, Yuqing Tian, Ying-shih Yu, and others have traced the evolution of Chinas political elites, from the Han Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, paying special attention to their social relations. A great insight from these works is that Chinese elites became more localized over time in their social relations, which greatly changed how they viewed the state and their relationship with the ruler.